Peckinpah’s first uncontested masterpiece is this elegiac portrait of the end of the Wild West, embodied in the form of two aging friends (unforgettably portrayed by Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea) with very different agendas, who are hired to guard a shipment of gold. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography was never better, capturing the untainted splendor of the high mountains and the bone-weary sadness of two men nearing the end of their lives’ trails. With Mariette Hartley, Ronald Starr.